I was talking with my Wodehouse-mad uncle the other day and,
as is our wont, we briefly glanced over the topic of our mutually adored
author. He asked how I was getting along
in my quest (although I now know that he actually reads this blog, so Hello
Uncle!) and I explained that my current course of action was to read all of the
Psmith novels in one go. There are about
four in the series, depending on how one counts the first books, especially
given that The Overlook Press decided to publish it in two volumes. At the time, I had just finished Psmith in
the City, and I remarked on the character of Mike. I noted that, while he dominated the first
couple of books, I was beginning to notice that he was taking a back seat to
the wild antics of Psmith.
My uncle smiled, and told me that that would be the way of
things for the next couple of novels. I’m
not surprised. Mike is a lovely, solid
character, insistent on both doing the right thing and the glory that is
cricket. The problem with a character
like that is there is only so far you can go with him. These overly principled types are all right
for a while in a Wodehouse novel, usually as a comic foil, but I can begin to
see that Wodehouse was feeling as though he was painting himself into a
literary corner.
Psmith is on the opposite end of the spectrum. He has eccentricities that annoy other
characters, and his presence dominates every landscape he inhabits, which is
quite the feat given that I’m reading a book instead of watching a film
adaptation. For instance, Psmith wears a
monocle at opportune moments in the plot that greatly vexes any authority
figure. He fixates on people that he is
trying to win over like a bloodhound and
even goes so far as to track them down in the sanctum of their private
clubs. Mike, on the other hand, does not
make himself a nuisance to his fellow man.
On at least two occasions, he has taken the blame for doing something he
did not, if only to make the life of the actual perpetrator a little
easier. The impression that I’m given is
that Wodehouse is in the middle of a balancing act, trying to figure out how
much larger than life he can make his characters without upsetting the comic
balance of his work. One of the reasons
that I think Bertie and Jeeves are so brilliant is that they both have defined
characters which both test the limits of plausibility without shattering them. Mike is more of the strong and silent type,
which can be a lovely thing to have in one’s life, but not quite as
entertaining in one’s literature.
